May
28, 1998 – Stainless Steel Studios, the Cambridge,
Massachusetts game development company founded by Rick Goodman (the creator/lead
designer of Microsoft's Age of Empires®),
has begun developing a new real-time strategy game
called Empire Earth®(working
title). This is a real-time strategy game for the next millennium. It will
set new standards in the genre, and offer gamers an experience that goes
far beyond anything that strategy games released, thus far, have offered.

After
co-founding Ensemble Studios with his brother and creating the award-winning
and best-selling PC-based game Age of Empires, Rick Goodman conceived the
idea for Empire Earth and founded Stainless Steel Studios in January 1998.
Talented designers, artists and programmers were hand-picked by Goodman
to establish the development team for this cutting-edge project.

Empire
Earth will appeal to game players who enjoy Age of Empires, but will offer
gamers an entirely new type of multi-player, real-time strategy game experience.
"Without compromising the easy-to-understand player interface that Age
of Empires offered, or the mass market appeal of the game, Empire Earth
will be a much bigger game in every aspect of the word. We're designing
an entirely new engine for this title, one that will offer features and
design elements never seen in a real-time strategy game," stated Rick Goodman,
the president of Stainless Steel Studios.

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Instead
of simply focusing on military conquest, Empire Earth will focus on several
areas, including: military conquest, diplomacy, politics, economics, and
resource trading. "Players will be able to win the game by concentrating
on any of these elements or combining the elements, instead of focusing
exclusively on military domination," said Goodman.

Empire
Earth will also offer a much larger and diverse technology tree, more units,
bigger worlds, more civilizations, and cover a time span of 500 millennia
(500,000 BC to 2500 AD), taking gamers from the dawn of civilization into
the future. "One feature that I'm particularly excited about is what we're
calling 'interactive unpredictability.' Earthquakes, plagues, tax revolts,
religious persecution, famine, pollution, civil war, global warming and
nuclear disasters, among other natural and manmade events will impact a
player's empire both directly and indirectly," said Goodman.

"Empire
Earth will feature artificial intelligence that's more advanced than anything
gamers will have seen before," stated Goodman. "Gamers will experience
a sense of true unpredictability in the AI and have the ability to collect
and trade up to twelve different resources as they progress through the
game. I think we've barely begun to explore the real-time strategy game
genre. While Empire Earth will be familiar to those who have played Age
of Empires, at the same time, it will bring entirely new and innovative
elements into the genre that have never been seen before. This will make
the overall play of the game a much more interactive and competitive experience."

Gamers
will control the growth and management of their empire using the game's
intuitive, mouse-driven graphical interface, and view the game from an
isometric perspective. "We are excited about expanding the strategy envelope
well beyond that of Age of Empires and other strategy games, however, Empire
Earth will remain easy to learn, easy to play and won't require that anyone
read a manual to get started," promised Goodman.

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Empire
Earth will offer a highly engaging single player experience and include
a wealth of single player scenarios and tutorials, plus feature a multi-player
mode allowing at least eight (8) players to participate in an online game
or Death Match.

"One
of the reasons for Age of Empires broad appeal is that it allows people
to experience the game in so many different ways, and each time the game
is played, it offers a totally different experience. Empire Earth will
expand upon this concept in some very intriguing ways. For example, the
game will offer over 300 technologies during the game's 12 epochs, challenging
a player to choose, very carefully, which technologies to pursue, since
only a fraction of them will be attainable during a single game. Male and
female heroes will also play pivotal roles in the game," stated Goodman.

This
summer, Stainless Steel Studios plans to announce an exclusive distribution
and marketing partnership with a major software publisher to handle the
worldwide release of Empire Earth and the company's subsequent titles,
including multiple expansion packs for Empire Earth.

Empire
Earth was conceived by Rick Goodman, the creator/lead designer of Microsoft's
award-winning and best-selling Age of Empires®
game. Empire Earth is a game that will appeal to all fans of Age of Empires.
While simultaneously improving upon the intuitive graphic interface, Empire
Earth provides a far more challenging and interactive experience, yet doesn't
compromise the game's accessibility and mass market appeal.

Empire
Earth will set new standards in the game genre, and offer design elements
and features never before experienced in a multi-player, real-time strategy
game. Stainless Steel Studios is currently developing an entirely new 16
bit graphics engine for Empire Earth. Players will be able to experience
500,000 years of history (500,000 BC to 2500 AD), divided into twelve (12)
unique epochs.